H
y
p
e
r
i
o
n
( c o n t i n u e d o n b a c k f l a p )
( c o n t i n u e d f r o m f r o n t f l a p )
G O T H A M C H O P R A
is an award-winning journalist and docu-
mentary ﬁlmmaker; most recently he was
involved in the formation of Al Gore’s
CurrentTV. He lives in Santa Monica with
his wife, his young son, and their dog.
tunity for big-time male bonding. Add a
nervous dog and an exuberant toddler
to the mix . . . well, it’s obvious that said
bonding is going to take the form of exercise
and exploration.
So Gotham and Deepak walk and talk,
discussing the laughs and licks that come
with having a dog, along with the contra-
dictions, complexities, and consequences of
having children. They soon realize the quali-
ties they observe and admire most in their
pets are values we humans would do well to
nurture within ourselves. They discover that
our best friends have a lot to teach us.
I F I T W A S N ’ T F O R D O G S ,
S O M E P E O P L E W O U L D N E V E R
G O F O R A W A L K .
—A N O N Y M O U S
In Walking Wisdom, Gotham and Deepak guide readers through
some of the most powerful spiritual qualities embedded not only
in the planet’s oldest wisdom traditions, but also in the souls of
man’s best friends, dogs. The result is in essence among the
most insightful and spiritual of Chopra books because of its
honesty, elegance, and authenticity.
Heartfelt, endearing, and above all
down to earth, Walking Wisdom offers readers
both enlightenment and comfort, with a little bit
of mayhem thrown in for good measure.
D E E P A K C H O P R A
is the author of countless bestselling books,
including The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,
Quantum Healing, and Why Is God Laughing?
f our
Papa, what would you do if you thought no one would ever nd out?
I like to think that’s the way I already live. There’s a quote from
Rumi: “I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying about who hears and
what they think.”
So is that the way you roll?
Not really. But your question raises an interesting phenomenon. When
anyone does something that becomes part of the public eye, then the public
creates an image of that person. And then that image, because it never
conforms to the reality of that person, sooner than later it gets deled. It
happens every time. And when that image is inevitably deled, society
gets enraged at the person when in fact they should be getting enraged at
themselves for creating the image in the rst place.
It’s a tangled web, for sure. The perfect example is someone like Tiger
Woods. He and all of the people that believed in him cocreated the mythic
persona that he started to become. Not just because he was a dominant
athlete on the golf course (which he presumably wouldn’t ever want to
change) but because of everything else— all of the multi- million- dollar
endorsement deals— that he signed onto and the image they perpetuated
together. He didn’t need to create that image that he allowed people to
make of him but he did, probably because it felt good at the level of ego,
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not to mention the money. But all of that created false expectations that
he couldn’t live up to. So he led a secret life. And in the connes of his
own solitude and isolation, his shadow emerged. When you have to live
up to an image that is not you, then sooner or later that image is deled.
Then everyone becomes enraged and many people end up getting hurt.
“.rs+rri:. i s ni s+or., +oxorrov i s : x.s+rr., +oi:.
is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”
I’m not entirely sure where this corny axiom comes from, but
I’ve seen it on greeting cards, bumper stickers, T-shirts, mouse pads,
and at least one tattoo. Google it and almost nine million entries
will appear, along with references to Emily Dickinson, Bob Marley,
Joan Rivers, Lil Wayne, and a 1902 book called Sun Dials and
Roses of Yesterday.
I have no idea who trst said these words, but I do know that
Master Oogway delivers the line with par tic u lar elegance in the
animated tlm Kung Fu Panda. I know this because I’ve watched
the movie every morning for the last six months. At 5:30 a.m.
I’ve been assigned “morning duty” in our house, a shift that en-
tails waking up with the boy, letting the dog out in the backyard,
changing the boy’s diaper, letting the dog back into the house, giving
her a treat, pouring milk and cereal for the boy, making wam es,
and then all three of us (boy, dad, dog) plunking down in front of
Kung Fu Panda. At 5:30 a.m.
Despite my enorts to mix it up— introduce a little Horton Hears a
Who or Madagascar 2 or maybe SportsCenter— Krishu’s loyalty to
Panda is steadfast. We cannot deviate from the routine. It’s amazing,
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really. Krishu can watch Panda every single morning as if it’s the
trst time. He laughs at all of Po’s jokes, recoils when Tai Lung es-
capes from prison, and edges forward on the couch when Tigress,
Mantis, Monkey, and Viper ready themselves to accept Tai Lung’s
combative challenge. Krishu knows what’s coming— even antici-
pates it— nevertheless, he plays each moment over and over with
an enthusiasm that is nothing short of amazing.
The same can’t be said for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve dreamed
up an alternative, more Dark Knight- ish story line, one in which Tai
Lung actually succeeds in his coup to unseat Master Shifu. In this
version, Tai Lung takes over the world, disrupting the spiritual
equilibrium of the planet and propelling it into an apocalyptic dark-
ness, like being forced to sit in the oversized chairs at Starbucks
while staring at drab pagan artwork for all eternity.
In this Armageddon, spiritual disciplines and martial arts like
kung fu, karate, and judo would have to be mined, reawakened, and
reimagined, and the warriors who mastered them would be the
planet’s last hope to possibly reignite civilization from the barista-
driven madness it had become. It’s just a thought.
The trade- on for my doing morning duty is that by 6:30 I can
return Krishu to bed to snuggle with his mama while I mount my
nashy new road bike and head out into the canyons for a semi-
strenuous bike ride. The point of this obsessive riding (aside from
getting out of the house) is to train for an intensive bike trip I had
planned in Italy. My brother- in- law, se nior to me by about tve
years, had recruited me into this boys’ club comprised mostly of
guys like him: successful professional investors, bankers, and real
estate magnates whose jobs had suddenly become a lot less busy on
account of a receding economy. When we weren’t actually out on
our bikes, forming amateur race formations, comparing slick new
pedals, gears, and other components I was only just becoming famil-
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iar with, we were sharing YouTube videos and links to maps and
commentaries that showed just how impossible our upcoming Ital-
ian endeavor really was.
Aside from the rigorous physical training and mental games
spurred by YouTube, I had also adjusted my diet considerably. Carbs
and sugars were strictly monitored. Proteins were consumed in
plenty and calories— once so forbidden— were now most welcome
to provide energy for the training rides that included steep climbs
up the canyons of Santa Monica and Malibu. Our kitchen had
turned into a veritable laboratory, the cabinets packed with color-
ful powders and thick protein bars. I spent early mornings mixing,
shaking, blending them like a sorcerer and concocting elaborate
molasses- like shakes that I’d muscle down as Candice, Krishu, and
even Cleo watched aghast. It was worth it, I told myself. After all,
didn’t the packaging promise that these supplements would ener-
gize my body and help it recover after particularly grueling train-
ing sessions?
The more I thought about all of this training and the collateral
enect, the less clear I was about why exactly I was doing it. I knew
that while I enjoyed biking, it didn’t come close to stirring the com-
petitive juices I once felt when I played pickup basketball games at
the local playground, recreation I had given up only months ago
after chronic knee problems forced me on the court. Biking was
one of the few sports I could come up with that didn’t involve high
impact on my creaky joints. Still, there was nothing really com-
petitive about the sport, just long, arduous rides, sometimes with
steady climbs up hills that required their own strategy to conquer.
If anything, scaling these hills required quieting the mind and
pacing thoughts over long, taxing periods. That sort of mental train-
ing was new for me, akin to meditation, which I was familiar with,
but very dinerent from the sort of instinctive movements that
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came with basketball. Taking on steep hills too aggressively risked
overexertion, sabotaging reserve energy that was required for lon-
ger rides. This recalibration of my athletic life— always a big part
of my existence— was signitcant for me and something I was still
adjusting to even as the Italy trip crept closer. So even as I txated
on how I was going to do it, I still hadn’t fully resolved why.
My father noted my sudden obsession with riding.
“You’re really into it, huh?” he remarked one morning as he
brewed his conee.
“I guess so.” I shrugged, still ambivalent.
“I know why,” he said as he poured hazelnut creamer into his
cup. “You’re getting old.”
I looked at him dubiously.
“You used to just put on your sneakers, pick up a ball, and go
play.” He stirred the creamer into his conee. “From when you were
about eleven years old to just a few months ago. Now you have an
expensive bike with expensive bike clothes packed with strange gels
and liquids, preparing for an expensive trip halfway across the planet
just to exercise.” He shrugged and sipped his conee.
“Um, I don’t think—”
“You’re too young to have a midlife crisis,” he determined.
“But the writing is on the wall. You’re going to Italy to exercise.”
I stared at him blankly, unsure of what to say. My trst thought
was to just be impressed that he actually had any memories of me
when I was eleven years old. Not the generic age of ten, nor the
broad swath of being a teenager, but eleven. That was pretty good.
I shook my head as I tlled my water bottle. “I don’t know if
that’s it,” I mumbled.
“That’s it.” He nodded, convinced. “While our existence in the
cosmic context is barely a parenthesis in eternity, at times it can
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seem interminable for those of us enduring it. So we seek ways to
distract ourselves.” He changed the subject. “It’s a nice bike. How
much did it cost?”
No way I was going there. “I forget.”
“Sure.” He nodded again as he shum ed out of the kitchen. “Have
a good ride.”
ox +nr r xrr xsi yr business class night to Italy, I thought more
about my conversation with Papa. Maybe he was right. Deep inside,
I knew there was a part of me that was feeling an itch. Back at
home, I had become a creature of habit adhering to a routine. My
daily schedule had become rigid and predictable. Where not long
ago, I used to gallivant around the world, hanging out with and
interviewing narco- tram ckers and terrorists (or freedom tghters,
depending on your POV), now I was a guy with a wife, a kid, a dog,
a mortgage, obligations and commitments, and a new expensive
indulgence. As much as I adored my family and valued my life, I
saw it leading down an even more predictable path— more kids,
more dogs, higher mortgage payments, school fees, increased obli-
gations and commitments. What was I going to do to counteract
all of this? Get a more expensive bike? Go to Saint- Jean- de-
Maurienne next year to retrace the Tour de France? Was that what
my life was becoming? Who I was becoming?
“Mr. Chopra, can I oner you a cocktail?” the night attendant
interrupted my rapidly evolving crisis. She had been chatty when
I trst boarded the night and had helped me identify all the perks of
my fancy leather seat. Already I had put to good use the chichi
moisturizer and lip balm, donned the soft socks, and planned on
using the silky blindfold. She feigned great interest when I informed
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her of the purpose of my trip. My gaze lingered on her attractive
smile and raven- colored hair for a beat. This is where the midlife
crisis inevitably goes, isn’t it?
I shook myself out of it. “No, thanks.”
I recalibrated my mind. I needed to stop thinking about the dis-
tant future, tlled with anxiety- inducing images of suburban blight.
I had more immediate problems, namely an exhaustive physical
conquest I still wasn’t convinced I was ready for. And it wasn’t only
the physical challenge. A large part of the energy committed to the
imminent ride was the hype surrounding it. Not just in terms of
the six months or so of intensive physical training leading up to it,
but in the discussion and research around it. I’d already collected a
veritable archive of video footage on my computer, meant both to
inspire and intimidate. In the immediate days before I left for the
trip, when I dropped by the local bike store to load up on additional
paraphernalia, I mentioned my trip to the store manager.
“Really?” he said, more than a little perplexed.
“Yeah, really.” I nodded back.
He laughed and shook his head. What was that supposed to
mean?
I pressed him but he wouldn’t let on. “No point in getting
stressed about it now.”
Too late for that. Some of the mountainous passes on our agenda
were amongst the toughest rides in the world. They came with
fancy Italian names like the Stelvio, Gavia, and Motirolo, and were
spoken about in awe by those who knew. While most of the rides
themselves would likely last only four to tve hours at most, the
discussion around them could evidently last months. Each was
cloaked in legend and lore. Each aroused anxiety and intimidation
in amateur riders and veterans alike. Like the guy who ran the bike
shop. I was suitably stressed.
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Upon landing in Milan and embarking on the three- and-
a-half- hour car ride north into the Dolomite region, I saw the hills
we’d be scaling. They were impressive to say the least, terrifying to
say it plainly. From afar, they appeared majestic, their peaks shrouded
in clouds. As afternoon turned to night and it became more dim -
cult to actually see how far out the road in front of us climbed, I
found myself staring out the side of the window, inspecting the
angle of the road as it rushed by and counting “Mississippis” in my
head, trying to get a gauge on just how lengthy these slopes were,
how long it would take to ride them. The higher the counts rose,
the more ner vous I became.
Figuring the best thing I could do to suppress my nerves was to
distract myself, I turned my attention to Ian, the sinewy instructor
we had hired to be our guide for the week. But he did little to
quell my fears. After some obligatory chitchat about movies and
other forgettable fare, the conversation turned to riding, little more
than a passing fad to me, but a full- on passion for him. When I
described some of what I had heard about the epic rides we were
to encounter and the nerves that accompanied them, he responded
solemnly. “Don’t think about any of that,” he intoned. “Seriously,
it can really paralyze you to think that way. Just stay focused on
the road in front of you.”
Okay, I nodded. My trst impression of Ian was that he was a
pretty relaxed guy. This turn into serious land felt somewhat abrupt.
While his point was to not think about the rides coming up just
hours away, his sudden earnest tone did the exact opposite. “I’m
screwed” reverberated in my head the way my father once taught
me to silently repeat my mantra, or secret sound, when I meditated.
A few hours later we at last arrived at the charming hotel that
would serve as our home base for the next few days. I called Can-
dice to check in.
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“Are you ner vous about the ride tomorrow?” she asked.
“Apparently we shouldn’t be talking about it,” I told her.
“Seriously?” I could picture her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Makes the ride impossible or something. I don’t know.” I shook
my head. “Biker talk.”
“That makes sense,” Candice agreed.
“Really?” I was the one grimacing now. “Since when did you
become Lance Armstrong?”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Focus on the race, not the tnish
line. The journey is the destination. That’s probably something
your dad would say.”
“Or Nike,” I shot back. “How’s the boy?”
“Good,” she replied. “Entertaining his grandmother.”
Candice’s mother had traveled from her home in Atlanta to lend
Candice a helping hand. Preparing his meals, changing his diapers,
reading him books, giving him a bath, watching Kung Fu Panda;
there were a lot of routines for which Candice needed coverage.
Her mom was more than capable of mastering them all. But more
than anything, Wai pó (the Chinese term by which Krishu referred
to his maternal grandmother) was his long- lost play pal. She indulged
him far more than anyone else, thereby becoming his favorite per-
son. He ordered her around, demanding foods on on hours— cereal
at night, sandwiches in the morning— as if to test her boundaries
and tnd his own.
Bad timing. Prompted by a great deal of pressure from Candice’s
newly formed mommy mata, she and I had in recent weeks begun
the great potty training challenge. All of the parenting books had
been consulted and all of them agreed, the more we could add struc-
ture around Krishu’s life, create a reliable routine for him and a set
of expectations for him to rely on, the smoother the pro cess would
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go. So started Krishu’s cultural indoctrination, as my father later
described it, into the ways of our world.
“It starts with regulating your biology. It ends with regulat-
ing everything else until you’re just a bundle of conditioned re-
nexes.”
Like many of Papa’s statements, this sounded like something the
Unabomber would say. Oh well.
Early on, Krishu seemed to take to the new routine, happy to
park it on his little plastic potty chair as long as one of us was will-
ing to park it alongside him and read him a story. He even man-
aged to deliver the goods once or twice in the trst week, earning
accolades from family members with whom we shared the joyous
news.
“He’s really advanced for his age,” my mother commended.
“A total prodigy,” Candice’s father agreed.
Those initial deposits into the potty chair set us on a dangerous
path of false expectations. Candice and I were convinced that the
books had it wrong, that this was not a pro cess that would take
months and was inevitably fraught with setbacks. It would take just
days for our metabolic boy- genius to master the tao of poo, as
Master Oogway might call it. Alas, it was as if Krishu sensed this
sudden pressure for him to mature too quickly, and soon enough
his detance kicked in. He had no real interest in our desire to as-
similate him in a world where potties were deposited in some strange
porcelain throne and nushed away. He was perfectly happy with
the current system where he’d do his business whenever and wher-
ever he needed to and we’d clean up after him. It had worked out
tne for him so far.
“How’s the potty training coming?” I asked Candice warily.
“Not so great,” she replied. She blamed it on Wai pó’s arrival and
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her indulgences of the boy. We both knew the real reasons ran much
deeper, that our son was the Mangal Pandey, India’s legendary
mutineer, of potty training. If given a chance, he would lead a re-
volt of as many two- year- olds as he could tnd to resist this horrible
custom called potty training. He had played a leading hand in simi-
lar rebellions in the sandbox. Still, it was far easier to pin the blame
on Grandma.
“Eh.” I shrugged, half a world away, resigned to letting the kid
tgure it out. It was consistent with my larger parenting philoso-
phy. Eventually, either because it just felt uncomfortable or because
of the inevitable cultural awkwardness of being a teenager who
shat in his pants, Krishu would beg us to be potty trained. I felt the
same way about his eating and sleeping. When he got hungry
enough, he’d eat. When he got tired enough, he’d sleep. Why such
pressure to create elaborate rituals and routines to trick him into
stun he instinctively deted? Alas, more theories that never stood a
chance with my wife.
“Does he miss me?” I asked.
“Do you want me to lie to you or tell you the truth?”
“Go ahead and lie.”
“He’s really missing you and asking for you constantly.” Im-
pressive.
I knew in fact that with Wai pó in the house, he’d hardly have
noticed I was gone. “What about Cleo?”
This time Candice didn’t even bother to lay out the options.
“She’s really missing you and asking for you constantly!”
“She’d better . . . Ungrateful bitch.”
Candice laughed and then added anectionately, “You are, aren’t
you?” Clearly Cleo had rolled over by Candice’s side and was reap-
ing loving rubs.
“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it,” Candice reminded me. “You
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know Cleo. As soon as you’re back, she’ll love you more than ever.
Her mind works on what’s right in front of her.”
“Yeah,” I lamented. “But why can’t she be like those dogs you
always hear about? You know, that sit in front of the door waiting
for their master? That get all depressed and moody because the
thing they care most about in the world is that one person who’s
not there?”
“Ha! Cleo? Think again.”
“I guess.” I shrugged. It’s actually one of Cleo’s greatest
attri butes— her ability to focus her attention on the present mo-
ment without being distracted by anything else.
“I miss you,” Candice said, her voice once again suspiciously
seductive.
“Liar!”
“Watch it, Lance!” she warned. “You’d better get some sleep for
that big ride tomorrow that we can’t talk about and you shouldn’t
think about.”
“Okay,” I said. “Ciao.”
“Ooh,” she purred. “Very Italian.”
:s i sr++ir i into my cozy hotel room in Bormio, Italy, my cell
phone rang. I picked it up to tnd my father on the other end of the
line.
“How was the night?” he asked.
“Expensive,” I replied. He laughed.
“I talked to Mom.” He paused. “Nana’s doing much better. His
condition is stable. He’ll probably go home in a few days.”
Stable is such a strange term if you really think about it. Surely
it’s better than “critical” or “life- threatening,” but far short of where
you want to be, if you ask me.
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“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “What does that mean?”
“It means let’s take one day at a time.” Papa reverted into doctor
verbiage. “He should be tne. But I don’t want to say much.”
Who knew Papa was such a voodoo doctor, as if what he said
would somehow disrupt the delicate balance of Nana’s recovery.
“Is Mom okay?” I asked, changing tack. If for some reason she
wasn’t, it would be a telling sign. My mom is notoriously even-
keeled.
“She’s okay. A bit emotional, you know? It’s her father after all.”
A curveball. On the one hand, the fact that my mother was
“emotional” was concerning. The inclusion, however, of the “it’s
her father after all” bit was a variable. I was unsure how to recon-
cile this.
“Don’t get worked up about it.” Papa interrupted my thoughts.
“No one can control the future. You’ll wear yourself out trying.
Just have the intention that Nana will be tne and let go.”
There it was again, the whole intention, attention, detachment
equation. Sounded simple enough, yet enormously dim cult in ex-
ecution.
“I’ll try,” I said unconvincingly.
“Trying won’t work,” Papa reprimanded.
Right, a sh doesn’t try to swim, it just does. A bird doesn’t try to y,
it just does. You don’t try to walk, you just do. Between Papa and Yoda,
these were axioms I had grown up with. But it didn’t make things
any easier.
“How’s baby?” This had become my father’s new bailout move
whenever he was unsure where to steer a conversation.
“Good,” I said. “Potty training is not going so hot.”
This too stumped him. I’d be willing to bet my every last penny
that my father had no involvement in my potty training when I
was a toddler.
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“Yeah, it’s never easy.” Wow— good recovery. “What about
Cleo?” he asked.
I laughed, impressed. The fact that he remembered her name,
let alone was concerned about how she was doing, signited a genu-
ine and growing connection between the two of them.
“She’s great,” I answered. “Now that Candice’s mom is there,
she’ll actually get to go on some long walks every day.”
“How often does she see Candice’s mom?” Papa inquired.
I thought about it. Candice’s mom visited us about every six
months or so. I informed Papa.
“Do you think,” Papa started, “that if you opened up Cleo’s
skull and looked at her brain, you would tnd that memory of
Candice’s mom?”
I hoped it was a rhetorical question. “Don’t get any ideas.”
“The brain, for both humans and dogs,” he noted, “does not store
memories. There’s no archive system for them inside your brains.
Memories exist as possibilities nonlocally in a central plain of exis-
tence.”
“Let me give this a shot,” I onered. “It’s the dinerence between
storing data on your hard drive versus storing it on the server.”
Pause.
“The real dinerence between Cleo and us is her ability to access
the server with minimal disruption.”
This time I demanded a translation.
“It’s pretty simple. Animals react and do not renect on their
reactions. They draw on their own memories and the memories
of their species, but they are not tainted by nor twisted around
emotions.”
It made me think. Even if a few months or a year had passed, as
soon as Candice’s mom walked through the door, Cleo was all over
her, leaping up onto her, excitedly seeking anection.
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“So you don’t think Cleo is motivated by memories?” I in-
quired. “I mean, she clearly reacts instinctively to a lot of things.”
“There’s a big dinerence,” Papa responded quickly. “To be re-
active to your past, to memories, is to be a prisoner of them. That’s
what most people do— play victim to their past experiences. Being
instinctive is totally dinerent.
“Instincts are based on our collective memory or karma. The
alchemy of all of our past experiences manifests in the instincts of
our species. Instincts rely on that reservoir of past experiences.
“Even humans— no one has to teach us how to fall in love for
the trst time. Not because we have any memory of it or how
great the experience is, but because at the right moment, it feels
right.
“The problem is that we create barriers in our own lives, condi-
tion ourselves. That trst moment of falling in love creates a mem-
ory that we then will go back to for the rest of our lives. It creates
an expectation of what love should be like in the future. That’s
when things get complicated.
“Cleo’s beyond the complications,” Papa concluded.
It was a lot to digest. “Do you really think humans are capable
of that?” I asked.
This time Papa didn’t respond with the hesitation as he had be-
fore. In fact, he didn’t respond at all.
“Papa?” I prodded. “Are you there?”
Another beat passed before he tnally spoke. “Turn on your TV,”
Papa said, his tone decidedly altered.
“Why?” I scrambled to locate the remote. “What?”
Another pause. “They’re saying that Michael Jackson may be
dead.”
. . .
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wa l k i ng wi s dom ::
i r i rs+ xr+ Michael when I was tfteen. My father had been
introduced to him by Elizabeth Taylor, who was a frequent visitor
to an alternative health center in western Massachusetts where my
father had become the medical director. The more Ms. Taylor
learned about my father and the spiritual material that he was en-
gaged in, the more she became convinced that Michael would be
fascinated by him. While she was most interested in the spa- like
resources that the health center onered, not to mention the fact that
it was so removed from Hollywood and the chaos that came with
it, my father recalled that she thought Michael would be more at-
tracted to “all that other magical stun ” that my father spoke about—
like meditation, consciousness, and karma.
She was right. Michael became family from the moment he and
Papa met. And it wasn’t just the “magic stun ” that he was attracted
to; it was the “normal stun ” as well. Just a few months after my fa-
ther and Michael met, Michael invited him to his Neverland ranch
just near Santa Barbara.
Papa mentioned his upcoming trip one night over dinner. He
was so casual he might have been discussing the weather.
“How long a drive is it from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara?
I have a meeting in LA next week and then might make a trip to
Michael Jackson’s ranch. He wants to see me.”
Mallika and I stared at him in disbelief.
“What?” he asked as we struggled to tnd words.
“Michael . . . ?” I uttered.
“Jackson . . . ?” she completed.
Papa nodded. “Do you want to come with me?”
Mallika was heartbroken. She desperately wanted to go, but was
scheduled to leave the following morning on some do- gooder
mission to the Dominican Republic. Something about spending
the summer digging latrines. I, on the other hand, had no such
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:| got ha m chop r a w i t h de e pa k chop r a
philanthropic agenda. My plans centered around a summer’s worth
of bleacher bumming at Fenway Park.
I played it cool, though. After all, I was tfteen, the pinnacle of
teen arrogance and attitude. I wore Cross Colors and Adidas. I
played varsity basketball and totally felt J. D. Salinger. I couldn’t
react the way I wanted to: “Are you f ’ing kidding me? Hell yes,
I’ll go with you to meet Michael f ’ing Jackson.”
Instead, I shrugged. “Yeah, that sounds cool. I’ll come with . . .”
Like many in my generation, I had grown up as a devotee of
Michael Jackson. It wasn’t just his music that I obsessed over, it was
him. It was the Thriller video that inspired a consecutive string of
seven Halloween costumes and the purchase of a red leather jacket
that I sliced up to resemble the one MJ wore in the iconic video. It
was the Billie Jean per for mance at the Motown twenty- tfth An-
niversary special that inspired the purchase of half a dozen penny
loafers. It was the glove he wore that prompted me to buy a skier’s
insulation glove— the closest thing I could tnd to resemble the one
he wore. And there was the black fedora that I made my parents buy
me and that I wore constantly until it resembled something more
suited to Indiana Jones than Michael Jackson. I looked like a real
idiot wearing that oversized hat at the age of eleven and yet, because
almost everyone else also idolized Michael Jackson, it was cool.
Michael Jackson was cool. The way he mastered the stage or
rocked out a stadium with such superhero- like power and sheer
talent, but then seemed so vulnerable and human on it . . . cool.
Having grown up with the guru to the stars, I’ve been lucky to
meet a lot of famous people. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned
it’s that they’re usually not as intimidating in person as their celeb-
rity may have made them out to be. Over time, I guess I realized
that it was less about them and more about us and our expectations.
We idolize celebrities, create icons out of them, and are disap-
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wa l k i ng wi s dom :-
pointed, even angered, when they don’t live up to the standards
we’ve created.
I’d experienced this up close and personal. There was the best-
selling author I’d idolized in high school, whom I met at a dinner
party and who became rankled when talking about Barnes & Noble
and how they didn’t place his books at eye level on their shelves.
As if that wasn’t enough, all through dinner he just bitched and
moaned about Amazon’s shipping policies to the point that it was
really tragic. Knowing how much he despised the good people
who brought his books to the public— and worse, seeing just how
petty he was— made it hard to appreciate the words he put on a
page after that. There was the sexy actress whom I fantasized about
until I overheard her refer to the health center stan as “hired help
not worth minimum wage.” After that I could never, well, fanta-
size about her in the same way.
In the “self- help” world, which over the years we had become
even more embedded in, the ironies were even more intense. Re-
lationship experts whose embattled marriages were full of scandal
and intdelity. Nutrition gurus who hid out in the back of restau-
rants carb loading, chasing them down with soft drinks. Advocates
of “simplifying one’s life” who traveled with entourages that made
pro athletes look like amateurs.
Not so with Michael.
He was everything I had ever imagined and so much more. We
became friends over the years. Family. I would learn that not only
was he an incredibly dynamic and brilliant artist, a celebration of
divine- like talent, but also a deeply connicted and agonized soul.
Michael may have been a man whose head was often in the clouds, so
disconnected from the reality that “ordinary people” experienced,
but he was also someone who felt human emotions in the deepest
way I’d ever witnessed.
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:o got ha m chop r a w i t h de e pa k chop r a
Years after I met him, I matriculated at the prestigious Ivy
League school Columbia University— largely because of a college
recommendation he wrote. Michael lived mostly in New York
City, high atop the Four Seasons Hotel in the pent house, and I’d
visit him regularly, just hanging out, sometimes collaborating on
some projects he was working on, constantly trying to draw him
out from the isolating cocoon that he and his advisers had wrapped
around him. Usually I’d fail. To compensate me for some of the
contributions I’d made to his projects, he’d pay me in cash, pulling
a literal sack of bills from behind the toilet where he kept it hid-
den, and slipping me a couple grand. I’d proceed to call my college
friends, who’d hop on the subway and meet me downtown so we
could spend that same cash on what mattered most to us at the time:
strippers.
More time passed. Michael went from iconic rock star, the great-
est talent the world may have ever seen, to scandal- plagued celeb-
rity. His face was literally falling apart— the result of not only
self- innicted surgeries to combat some of his deeper psychological
issues, but a skin disease that few knew about. The press alleged
that he was a race- hater or a freak, charges that made Michael
alternatively melancholy and furious. And of course there were
the even more devastating allegations of sexual impropriety with
young boys that would for a time taint all of his past glories. For
me, where I once proudly showed on that I had met MJ when I was
tfteen years old, it was now a sheepish throwaway line that I mut-
tered under my breath for fear of the raised eyebrows and smirks it
would trigger.
After the storm clouds of the scandals passed, Michael entered a
new stage of his life, and I soon followed: fatherhood. We took de-
cidedly dinerent roads to the same destination. Whereas I did it the
old- fashioned way, Michael literally manufactured a family, one
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wa l k i ng wi s dom :¬
that would love him in a way that no one else ever had. It was easy
to see from the way he was with his three kids that they were the
one thing in his life he valued above all else. Years after he had
already started his family, Candice gave birth to Krishu. Michael
called me and said, “See— I told you so, Igger” (his nickname for
me. He had nicknames for everyone. “Starbucks,” you know who
you are), “it’s the greatest thing you’ll ever know.”
I actually asked him to be Krishu’s godfather, but ominously he
said he didn’t think he’d be a good one. “I think you should tnd
someone who’d be better at it,” he confessed. “There are too many
bad things in my life he shouldn’t learn.”
He did nickname Krishu “the Chindian,” though, and checked
in once every few weeks to make sure that Candice and I were
speaking multiple languages around him.
“Michael,” I’d tell him early on, “he’s just a few months old.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he’d respond, “he’s smarter than all of us.
Make sure you keep it that way.”
All the while in the last few years of his life, even as he was gain-
ing greater emotional and spiritual fultllment than he ever had
through his life with his children, Michael was struggling. Those
close to him knew it, and yet, despite repeated attempts, there wasn’t
much anyone could really do. Once again, he had become exceed-
ingly skillful at building that cocoon of isolation around him, es-
pecially because he thought he had a secret he didn’t want anyone
to know.
Just a few weeks before I had left for Italy, he had called me in
the middle of the night, as he often did. He sounded clearheaded
and on point. He’d heard about the fate of my journalist friend
Laura Ling, imprisoned in North Korea, and wanted to know if
I knew any details the news was not reporting. (Based on his own
experiences with many journalists, he didn’t trust them all that
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:: got ha m chop r a w i t h de e pa k chop r a
much.) When I told him there wasn’t much information to be had,
that North Korea was ruled over by a totalitarian regime that con-
trolled the press, he paused. He told me he’d seen pictures of Kim
Jong- il, the “Dear Leader” of North Korea who ruled the isolated
nation with an iron tst. He noticed that he often wore military
jackets, similar to the ones that Michael wore when he went out in
public or performed.
“Do you think he’s a fan of mine?” Michael proposed.
I shrugged in the darkness of my room. “I don’t know.”
“If so, maybe I can help in some way.”
I promised him I’d look into it.
“Okay.” He thanked me. “I hope they’re doing all right.” He
had read somewhere that both Laura and her colleague Euna were
likely being kept in isolation. “Being by yourself like that is not
easy, isolated from people, from time.”
I nodded, not knowing really what to say.
“Say hi to the Chindian,” he whispered. “Good night.”
:r +r r i nux· ur with my father, I paced around my Italian
hotel room. I turned back to the tele vi sion and nipped through the
channels. Every network imaginable was covering the news that
Michael Jackson was being transported to a Los Angeles hospital.
Most had backed on the earlier headline that he was already dead
and resigned themselves to the more nebulous description of his
being in a coma and in critical condition. I knew the notorious
death watch was probably under way, with satellite trucks parked
outside the hospital, Michael’s homes in Los Angeles and Never-
land, his parents’ famous Encino compound, and more, eager for
news and reaction to the slightest bit of rumor.
Sitting in my hotel room, staring at the television— I had settled
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wa l k i ng wi s dom :o
on an Italian news network that I couldn’t even really understand—
I watched with a growing pit in my stomach. A grainy and shaky
video loop from the gossip website TMZ depicted frenzied para-
medics rushing a slight tgure on a gurney into a waiting ambu-
lance. These images would emerge as the tnal ones of the great
Michael Jackson. More video now caught a growing vigil of fans
outside the legendary Cedars- Sinai Medical Center in Beverly
Hills. The reporter rattled on in Italian, her voice almost tripping
over itself while she relayed what ever the latest bit of news was.
My cell phone was already buzzing with text messages and e-mails,
friends eager to get an inside scoop if I had one. I glanced at the
alarm clock again. It was now well after ten p.m. We were sup-
posed to be up and out on the bikes in the early morning for our
trst grueling ride. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure that I’d be staying
much longer in Italy, let alone making the start time. Connicting
thoughts raced through my mind— whether or not I should be
sticking it out or rushing home. All the while that pit in my stom-
ach kept growing, the suspicion solidifying that no matter what
the news was saying about Michael’s condition, my own intuition
was more reliable.
In an instant I made a single choice: to turn on the TV and my
phone. The combination of jet lag, ner vous anticipation for the
ride, and this gut- wrenching news had unsteadied me. I sensed that
tomorrow would be that much more emotionally chaotic, but sepa-
rating now and then were a few short hours where I could isolate
myself and not confront it all. It was less an intellectual decision
than an instinctive one.
As I lay in bed a few minutes later, I thought about Michael, the
trst time we met, the summer I traveled with him as he toured Eu-
rope, and of the times we’d spent together since then. I felt a heavi-
ness in my heart and tried to tnd more of the mostly humorous
048-44856_ch01_3P.indd 89 7/23/10 7:27 PM
oo got ha m chop r a w i t h de e pa k chop r a
encounters that Michael and I shared through the years— the time
we snuck out of his Los Angeles apartment on Halloween and vis-
ited a nightclub where he danced so feverishly that the whole crowd
stopped and started cheering him— this anonymous man in a
Godzilla mask. Or the time in a New York City recording studio
when he told the rapper Ice- T that I was his bodyguard. Ice- T
sized me up and told Michael he could help him “upgrade” if he
wanted to get serious about his protection.
But I couldn’t steer my own emotions away from the sadness I
felt growing inside. “Let go of the illusion of control,” Master Shifu
reminded me. So I employed a dinerent tact. I decided to just go
ahead and feel sad. To not try and dodge the emotions, but rather
“take own ership” of them, as Dr. Phil might suggest, and let them
wash through me. Within tve minutes, I was immersed in a deep,
hard slumber.
+nr r oiiovi x· xorxi x· I woke with a start. I didn’t need an
alarm clock or anything else to wrestle me from my surprisingly
restful sleep. I stared at the tele vi sion screen, determining whether
or not I should switch it on. Instead I turned to my cell phone and
powered it up. Being overseas, I had the option of whether I wanted
to turn on my “mail settings” and download e-mail.
Before I could decide, the phone rang. It was Papa.
“How are you?” he asked.
“You know . . .” I stopped, unsure what to say.
“They contrmed the death not too long ago,” he said softly.
“Right.” I nodded. Inside I felt a profound sadness, though an
equally profound lack of shock.
“I think you should stay in Italy and do your bike ride,” Papa
suggested without my even prompting it.
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wa l k i ng wi s dom o+
“Really?” It had crossed my mind again that maybe I should
call it on and head home.
“It’s going to be a circus here,” Papa countered. “I’ve already got-
ten calls from every news outlet you can imagine. Already did Larry
King. They’re asking for you.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, not surprised. The thought of rushing back
to the growing media frenzy was not appealing.
“I don’t know the trst thing about biking,” Papa interceded
again. “But if I were you, I would get on the bike and just focus on
the road in front of you.”
Not surprisingly, Deepak did know biking. As it turns out, his
advice was the same sage wisdom onered by the experts. Never try
to conquer the race, just take one stage at a time. Don’t even worry
about the whole stage, break it down into sections and ride it modu-
larly. Listen to the greatest riders and they’ll tell you, they don’t
even think in sections as much as they just look downward where
the wheel spins on the road. Sometimes they’ll tnd the tram c lines
in the road and use them to help tnd their rhythm and pace, until
everything else— the course, the other riders, even the time itself—
falls away. It’s the same experience the greatest athletes use to de-
scribe being “in the zone” or “the runner’s high” when all the details
fade away and they become one with everything around them,
including themselves. It’s in fact the state of awareness that the great
scriptures, both East and West, describe.
“I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the
trst and the last,” the Bible depicts.
“I am their beginning, their being, their end,” Lord Krishna
chronicles himself in the Bhagavad Gita.
Master Oogway concurs: “You are too concerned with what
was and what will be.”
I thought for a moment about the road ahead, of my father and
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o: got ha m chop r a w i t h de e pa k chop r a
my friend. I thought about my mother and Nana, of Candice and
Krishu, and of how life is so neeting, how it’s gone in the blink of
an eye, the veritable parenthesis in eternity.
We go from potty training to being regular. We wrap ourselves
up in a web of expectation, anticipation, and memory and we tnd
comfort in it because it oners a sense of stability and predictability.
We chart out our lives with goals and codes. We plan. We prepare.
And even those of us who do get those rare and powerful mo-
ments of being fully rooted in the present tnd that it can be fraught
with perils. For when they are out of it— like my friend Michael
Jackson— they tnd that ordinary existence lacks the same high.
Papa broke the silence. “Remember when Michael took us to
his studio on that trst visit to Neverland?” Papa recollected. “And
he put on ‘Billie Jean’ and started dancing?”
Michael was almost bashful at trst, just nodding his head to the
beat of the music. But within minutes, as if he couldn’t control
himself, he was snapping and moving to the hard beat of the bass,
dancing nuidly like only he could.
“It was beautiful,” Papa described. “Because he was in the mo-
ment. He wasn’t just the dancer— he was the dance and the music
itself.”
I did remember.
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Papa, what would you do if you thought no one would ever nd out? I like to think that’s the way I already live. There’s a quote from Rumi: “I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying about ...

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Papa, what would you do if you thought no one would ever nd out? I like to think that’s the way I already live. There’s a quote from Rumi: “I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying about who hears and what they think.” So is that the way you roll? Not really. But your question raises an interesting phenomenon. When anyone does something that becomes part of the public eye, then the public creates an image of that person. And then that image, because it never conforms to the reality of